Vulture

Yeah but if he believes in himself, it would make sense to lose out financially in the short term in order to reap a far bigger payday in the future after he reestablishes himself as a starter where he would be making twice as much or more. If he accepts the change in roles then he's accepting a considerably lower future earnings ceiling. I don't think it's an unrealistic scenario at all.

Most arb eligible players settle before even going into arbitration. If Mazara had any sense he'd settle for less before getting non tendered at arb deadline, if he were offered a deal. If he'd do it at around three million I'd think it would be worth considering, the Sox could eat that and still pursue another option, leaving him as dh/rf depth or trade bait

Moncada, Robert, Vaughn and someone like Pederson would more than make up for any regression to '17-19 type Abreu production. Even Eloy is just scratching the surface of his potential production. People seem to be forgetting we already have a team on the upswing with an elite core that just won at a 95 win pace. By '22, an .800 ops from abreu should be sufficient. We just need solid complimentary pieces to fill it out. Of course Springer would be great, but we had encarnacion and mazara and still had one of the top three offenses in baseball. We're already in addition by subtraction territory there. Even resigning Mazara would be addition by nothing. No way he produces that poorly again IMO. Of course I'd rather aim higher there, but just saying. Its going to be very difficult to not substantially improve RF production from '20. Just get the best starting pitcher possible to stabilize the rotation, Sox will be in great shape moving forward.

Yeah but isn't the evidence to the contrary if stamina and durability have been on a steady decline? With advancements in medicine and training you'd think it would be the opposite. They must be doing something wrong. I can't remember the exact year but I was reading, maybe it was 1965, white Sox yearbook, Gary Peters wrote an article in which he was talking about how pitchers have to spend the off season getting in really good shape because they have to prepare themselves to throw 200 pitches thirty five times a year. But he was talking about running, swimming, splitting wood, etc. Now it practically takes a miracle to get a guy to throw 100 pitches thirty times.

Not really. The primary thing anyone puts into it is time, and no one's getting it back.

High strikeout rates for pitchers is becoming less and less meaningful in the era of three outcomes. Its almost just playing right into their hands. The entire idea of three outcomes is you accept high strikeout rates in order to maximize walk and home run rates. And there are plenty of pitchers with eye popping strikeout rates with walk and home run rates to match these days. Glasgow is just one example and hardly the worst offender. He's always had trouble limiting walks even when he was dominating minor leaguers. I mean you can strike out the side and still walk a couple batters and give up a three run bomb. Give me a Keuchel, Stroman or Colome types to beat the trend.

Its funny that they don't think he's good enough to pitch through the fifth inning yet still think they can get a top shelf return for him. Maybe they don't actually want to trade him. Could just be trying to pacify his trade demands, and stroke his ego at the same time. Hey we tried, but we couldn't get the elite prospects required to match your value.

Is baloney made out of beef?

Yeah but he's a friendly troll. Perhaps half troll, half human

I have to admit I thought Cruz was 41 for some reason. Still he has been at his peak level age 38-39, I think above still holds. Don't believe there is any other non steroid user who has peaked at elite level at those ages.

What's the new evidence?not sure what you're referring to. Are you claiming all other users tested positive since there have been positive tests? I would say Cruz is more than just an old elite player. I'd say he is an old elite player who reached peak production at age 40. If you take the above argument that simply concludes cruz may or may not be a user, then look at players with peak production at age forty (eliminate knuckle ballers here as irrelevant) what's left? Bonds and Clemens? Maybe I'm missing somebody. So we have either 2 of 3, or 3 of 3 players reaching peak production at age forty who used steroids, depending on Cruz. Considering the tens of thousands of mlb players in history, and that either 67% or 100% of peak production at 40 were users, and that Cruz may or may not be user, it must be at the least somewhat likely that Cruz is in fact a user. We're talking about something like 0.015%(3 of 20,000) of players reaching peak production at 40. If testing caught users in 99/100 cases over the course of testing, it would still be 67 times more likely for a user to test negative than a player reach peak at 40, but if I had to guess it would be closer to 9/10, if that, which would put it closer to 670 times more likely. To be the only player to reach peak without steroid would put that at 201 and 2010 times. I don't think it is unreasonable to conclude, given there are substances difficult to detect as well as methods to mask use, that it is far more likely that cruz is one of the undetected users(1 to 10% approx.) than the first player in major history to peak at forty plus at an elite level (0.015%) without the benefit of either steroids (0.005%) or a knuckleball(looking at you Hoyt Wilhelm).

Bad logic is employing a faulty premise, in this case, all players who use banned substances are tested as positive. If you use the sounder premise that some players who are not tested positive may be users of banned substances, then the above logic is perfectly reasonable. Given that we know that it is possible to use a banned substance and test negative, the latter is clearly logical but the former, not so much. Some not tested positive are users. Cruz is not tested positive. Therefore cruz may or may not be user. Some A are B. All C is A. Therefore C may or may not be B is perfectly valid structure

What's that supposed to demonstrate? Custody is established in the courts, not through abduction, even in Mexico. If he's "a father demanding his rights" and he is standing in the street holding the child in question, then it shows he is not following the law. This just supports that he attempted to abduct the child.

Okay let's get back to the simple facts: He is being charged in the federal women's justice court with abduction, assault, domestic violence and failure to pay. There is video of him withholding child from parent with custody. The fact he is being charged with failure to provide support confirms that he does in fact not have custody, since if he had custody there would be no question of support. Failure to provide court ordered child support is considered contempt of court. I don't see what the bone of contention there. These are the facts I cited. My conclusion is, he's screwed. You seem to be suggesting its reasonable to suggest these facts are all fabricated because Mexico is corrupt, as if that means an entire chain of events being reported may not have occurred. Doesn't seem reasonable to me.

So your contention is that the court may have announced it is pressing charges but that it isn't actually pressing charges, because corruption in business practices? Usually bribery is done in secret to cover up a case or bypass regulationw, not to create a public case that doesn't actually exist where the matter of a child's custody would have to be fabricated.

I don't see the relation to corrupt business practices and a case involving abduction in the women's justice court. Big difference between bribes related to regulations and fabricating evidence of a kidnapping. What do you think they created some deepfake of Arozarena and altered his record to make it look like he wasn't providing support or didn't have legal custody that he actually had?

I'm pretty sure it can be considered credible when a federal court says it is charging a person with crimes that they are in fact charging the person with crimes, Mexican or not. If he had legal custody of the baby they would have no grounds to charge him with abduction in the first place, and there is video of him trying to leave with the baby. So not difficult to draw a conclusion on charge of abduction and failure to provide support charges. I get you think Mexico is shit or something, but the idea that either of these items is fabricated is ludicrous

Is it? Pretty sure the federal court for women's justice considers themselves credible, and they are the ones charging him so I'd say that's the only opinion that matters. I'd hate to say its xenophobic to consider Mexico's highest court to be illegitimate, but...

Arozerana is the one being charged in a federal court, not the mother or the grandfather. If the mother has custody, which she does according to news reports, any action he takes would have to be done in the courts. It would be irrelevant to the question of whether he committed assault or abducted a child. Everything I posted above are facts as reported by Yucatán ahora. He is being charged with those charges that i listed.

According to Yucatán Ahora, he is being charged with taking a minor by force ("llevar a La fuerza de la niña" has an ugly ring to it in spanish), assault against grandpa, domestic violence against ex, and failure to pay child support. His case is going to the Center for Justice of Women. Dude is screwed. They've got video and a neighborhood full of eye witnesses to the abduction attempt. Apparently he showed up unannounced under the pretext of bearing gifts for the child, despite having failed to provide support, forced his way in to home, was blocked by neighbors from leaving with the baby, and then was arrested holding baby in question when police arrived. Sounds pretty cut and dried to me. If he has failed to provide support, then he has already displayed contempt for the court. Throw three felony charges on top of that in front of the same court, add a dash of outraged public. I'm not foreseeing any type of sympathetic handling of his case here.

Maybe. Not sure if bribery is going to work in this case when the story has received national coverage, but I guess we'll find out.

There are details. The story is reported in numerous Mexican news outlets. "Got in a fight with another man" is in fact assault. II'm not sure where people get the idea that fighting a man is legal. Grandfather of his baby's mother while attempting to run off with baby. I don't think anyone as going to look at the old man protecting his family versus a 25 year old professional athlete trying to abduct a child as the aggressor with dozens of witnesses on hand that clearly had the opposite impression

Also average fastball velocity in 2020 was 94.4 compared to averages of 94.7, 94.2, 94.1, 94.7, 95.1 and 95.1 from '13-'18, so I would say that is still within his career norm, rather than the loss of up to 5 mph like you were suggesting. The minimal difference from '18 could be accounted for as deliberate in order to improve command, as the results from '19 to '20 indicate he was more effective overall, just as easily as a loss. 0.7 is essentially nothing. How many pitchers put up a .200 slugging against? Hard to imagine a pitcher doing that with diminished stuff.

I guess you're half right upon further review. Colome didn't employ the cutter at all prior to 2017, according to fangraphs. Prior to that he used slider/curve/change, primarily slider, all of which were eliminated when he introduced the cutter. Still his average cutter velocity in '17 was 89.6, in 2020 it was 89.4. I wouldn't consider that to be a difference, and he has clearly perfected it over the last three years, so I still would have to disagree that his stuff has diminished. Every year since he switched to cutter he has improved from year to year.

He never even threw a cutter before 2019, so I don't know where you get his velocity on that pitch is down. According to fangraphs, his fastball velocity is down an average of less than 1 mph from his younger years, but considering he has changed to a cutter focused approach, and that cutter was one of the most effective pitches in mlb, to me its almost irrelevant anyway.